SANTA FE, N.M. – A new report shows how many people in New Mexico benefit from Medicaid as the program’s 50th anniversary on July 30 draws near.

Judy Solomon, vice president of health policy with the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says Medicaid provides health coverage for 576,100 low-income seniors, children and people with disabilities in the state. She says it’s especially helpful for New Mexico’s youngest residents.

“Less than 10 percent of kids are uninsured, and that is because of Medicaid,” says Solomon. “There is no way you would have a percentage like that without the Medicaid program that’s covering almost 350,000 kids.”

Solomon says the program also helps improve financial security, because people with Medicaid are less likely than people without insurance to go into medical debt, or to leave other bills unpaid to cover their medical expenses.

She adds the Affordable Care Act, which led to Medicaid expansion in New Mexico and many other states, may be the most significant change in the program’s history. She says it expanded a program that was previously limited by income thresholds and other factors.

“So, the ability to cover all adults, regardless of whether they’re caring for a child in their home, or regardless of whether they’re pregnant, is just incredibly important in ensuring the health of everybody in the country,” she says.

Solomon says since Medicaid was expanded in New Mexico in 2013, the state’s uninsured rate for adults dropped by nearly five percent.

Related

More About

Among the first things Democrats did after officially taking control of the House was to express support for efforts to appeal a Texas district court decision declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.

After two years of double-digit price hikes, the average premium for individual health coverage on the federal health law’s insurance marketplace will drop by 1.5 percent for 2019, the Trump administration said Thursday. The announcement marked the first time average premiums have fallen since the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2014.

Holtec International was in the news last month when the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied requests from some groups to hold an additional hearing over the company’s license to build an interim storage site in southeastern New Mexico to hold nuclear waste from commercial power plants.